ENAM News and Events

The NER Vermont Reading Series and the Vermont Book Shop are pleased to present Michael Coffey, Penelope Cray, and Rebecca Makkai, who will read from their poetry and fiction at Carol's Hungry Mind Café. From as far as Chicago and as near as Shelburne, these three writers represent an extraordinary range of literary imagination. Books will be available for signing.

Associate Professor of English and American Literatures

Yumna Siddiqi’s areas of specialization are postcolonial South Asian, African and Caribbean literature, postcolonial theory, diaspora and migration studies, literary theory, 19th and 20th Century British literature, and gender studies. Her book Anxieties of Empire and the Fiction of Intrigue (Columbia University Press, 2008) explores the contradictions of postcolonial modernity in turn of the 19th and turn of the 20th century fiction of detection and espionage. She has published articles on postcolonial literature and culture in Cultural Critique, Victorian Literature and Culture, Renaissance Drama, Alif, and South Asia Research. Her current research is on labour migration from South Asia, gender, and literature and culture. She also teaches courses on social movements, and on Marxism. Yumna did her Ph. D. at Columbia University in New York under the direction of Edward Said. She grew up in Bombay by the sea.

Courses

Course List:

Courses offered in the past four years. ▲indicates offered in the current term▹indicates offered in the upcoming term[s]

ENAM 0103 - Reading Literature
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ENAM 0202 - British Lit. & Culture II

British Literature and Culture II (1700-Present): Home and Away
This course introduces the extraordinary diversity and complexity of British literature from 1700 to the present. We will read seminal works of poetry, fiction, and drama from this period, focusing our attention on key issues such as national identity, stylistic revolution, canon formation, sexual politics, and the representation of cultural otherness. We will trace changes and continuity in this rich literary tradition and discuss literature's relation to key social and historical developments. Writers to be studied include Swift, Austen, the Romantic poets, the Brontës, Tennyson, Browning, Wilde, Yeats, Eliot, Woolf, Roy and Stoppard. For majors and non-majors. 3 hrs. lect. EUR LIT

ENAM 0205 / CMLT 0205 - Intro:Contemporary Lit. Theory

Introduction to Contemporary Literary Theory
This course will introduce several major schools of contemporary literary theory. By reading theoretical texts in close conjunction with works of literature, we will illuminate the ways in which these theoretical stances can produce various interpretations of a given poem, novel, or play. The approaches covered will include New Criticism, Psychoanalysis, Marxism and Cultural Criticism, Feminism, and Post-Structuralism. These theories will be applied to works by Shakespeare, Wordsworth, The Brontës, Conrad, Joyce, and others. The goal will be to make students critically aware of the fundamental literary, cultural, political, and moral assumptions underlying every act of interpretation they perform. 3 hrs. lect/disc. EUR LIT

ENAM 0270 / CMLT 0270 - South Asian African Carib Lit

In Other Worlds: South Asian, African, and Caribbean Fiction*
In the last decades, writers from postcolonial South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean have come into their own, winning international prizes and garnering attention because of the literary quality of their work as well as their nuanced engagement with important issues of our age--issues such as imperialism, orientalism, colonial rule, political resistance, subaltern studies, nationalism, economic development, gender and sexuality, immigration, diaspora, and globalization. We will discuss a range of works by writers such as Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, J. M. Coetzee, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Assia Djebar, Frantz Fanon, Hanif Kureishi, Nadine Gordimer, C.L.R. James, Jamaica Kincaid, George Lamming, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Rohinton Mistry, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Edward Said, Zadie Smith, and Wole Soyinka. Texts will vary from semester to semester. 3 hrs. lect/disc. (Diversity)/AAL CMP LIT

ENAM 0371 / GSFS 0371 - Postcolonial Women Writers

In Different Voices: Postcolonial Writing by Women
In her important essay “Under Western Eyes,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty suggests that the experiences of women from the so-called Third World have to be understood in their own terms, rather than through the lens of Western feminism. Focusing on writings by Assia Djebar, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Merle Hodge, Dionne Brand, Mahasweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, among others, we will examine how women from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean use fiction, poetry, and memoir to address a variety of concerns: familial relationships, caste, class, race, religious identity, history, education, work, national liberation, modernization, development, migration, diaspora, and globalization. 3 hrs. lect./disc. AAL CMP LIT

The Novel and the City
In this course we will examine a number of novels from the 20th and 21st centuries that are about life in the city, taking a global and trans-national approach. We will explore formations of urban life alongside transformations in the novel as a genre. We will put these novels of city life in dialogue with critical theory—that is, theories of culture and society that have as their aim human emancipation (for example, Marxism, feminism, critical race studies, and postcolonial studies). The novels we read will reflect important literary movements such as realism, modernism, and postmodernism. (Not open to students who have taken ENAM 0447) (Diversity)/CMP LIT SOC

ENAM 0440 - Postcolonial Literature Theory

Postcolonial Literature and Theory
The field of postcolonial studies addresses the literature and culture of regions that have been marked by the experience of European colonialism. Today Postcolonial writers and critics are at the cutting edge of creative and scholarly work around the world. We will read literature by writers such as Wole Soyinka, Assia Djebar, Patrick Chamoiseau, Michelle Cliff, Mahasweta Devi, and Salman Rushdie, We will consider these works alongside theory, history, and anthropology in order to explore their political, cultural, and literary dynamics. We will address such topics as: critiques of colonialism, nationalism, social movements, postcolonial gender studies, development, neocolonialism, globalization, migration, and diaspora. AAL CMP LIT SOC

ENAM 0711 - Senior Thesis: Creative Writ.

FYSE 1158 - Passages from India

Passages from India
In this seminar, we will focus on the literature, politics, and culture of 20th century India. We will discuss writing by Raja Rao, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Ismat Chughtai, Mahashweta Devi, Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, and others. Drawing on both popular and documentary films, we will explore this literature in the contexts of colonialism, nationalism, class and caste politics, gender, the state, regionalism, religion, notions of development, and globalization. 3 hrs. sem. AAL CW LIT

FYSE 1464 - Intro Postcolonial Literatures
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The Empire Writes Back: Politics and Literature from Postcolonial Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
A hundred years ago, Britain ruled about a quarter of the world’s population, and the British Empire covered approximately a quarter of the earth’s land surface. Though most of the colonies have won formal independence, the effects of global imperialism continue to be felt, and arguably Empire has taken on other forms. In this seminar we will discuss fiction, poetry, and drama by postcolonial writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Derek Walcott, Daljit Nagra, Wole Soyinka, Mahashweta Devi, Jean Rhys, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said, and Frantz Fanon, addressing questions about the nature and effects of colonization, anti-colonial resistance, representation, agency, and power. 3 hrs. sem. CMP CW LIT

INTD 1075 - Debating Global Literature

Debating Global Literature: Ngugi Wa Thiongo's The Wizard of the Crow
In this interdisciplinary course, we will analyze eminent Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s magisterial novel The Wizard of the Crow in the context of current debates on globalization, world literature, colonial and postcolonial theory, ecocriticism, and gender studies. Set in a fictional African country, the novel weaves together the stories of corrupt political leaders and the ordinary folk who use extraordinary means—wizardry, underground organizing, and ritual performances—to oppose them and carve out a place for themselves. Readings for the course will include Ngugi’s novel as well as theoretical readings from the fields of postcolonial studies, politics, history, development studies, and anthropology. AAL LIT SOC WTR